In today’s challenging economic climate marketing budgets are often exhausted, indeed sometimes marketing is the first budget to be cut. This makes no sense though given that you still need to be visible to potential customers and you’ll want to be seen over and above your competitors especially in a tougher market.
A holistic marketing budget is important. One that’s well thought out and that covers both BRAND and ACQUISITION. Yes, you need to tackle both because seldom will people convert just on a ‘call to action’ if the company trying to entice them isn’t known nor trusted.
A well-planned public relations approach is the perfect tool to boost your brand, to enhance credibility, and establish industry expertise. It helps to:
Connect with your audience
Share exciting stories with the media that relate to your audience. Readers crave connection and are drawn to feel-good stories or tales of successful challenges overcome that can give them a boost. Being seen as thought leaders is important.
Build your brand awareness
In today’s competitive world, brand awareness is vital. Public relations can play an essential role in increasing your brand’s visibility and reach. Unlike traditional advertising, PR offers a more authentic way to introduce your business to a broader audience and is more natural, often third-party endorsed and has longevity.
Boost credibility and trust
As your presence in the public domain increases month by month through stories published, so does the level of interest from your audience and further momentum is therefore gained. Readers become more confident and aware of your brand and product or service.
PR is the backbone for overall marketing and SEO
Though advertising is self-promotion, public relations is the power of third-party endorsement, a rubber stamp if you like. Embrace the potential of PR to increase your marketing efforts and do link PR stories to social channels for increased readership and traffic
Paid search, paid social, email marketing and so on are all important however earned media is important too as it costs much less to acquire a customer using PR over time and digital coverage on a regular basis across multiple publications also establishes a higher domain authority with Google thus improving your website positioning in natural search (SEO) – for free.
Can you really afford to ignore PR even in a tougher environment?
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